Contents
- 1 New York, 3 October 2013 – The inclusion of the rights of persons with disabilities in the Post-2015 Development Agenda was debated at the highest level of government during the opening of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly a week before. It is the first time in UN history that the rights of persons with disabilities have been discussed within the framework of the UN political agenda.
- 2
- 3 UK is taking an initiative for this.
- 4 According to “UK pledge to help tackle the ‘great neglect’ of disability”, UK pledged that all public-based school will be designed to allow disability access, and using “universal design” (universal because for the diverse students, its infrastructure and teaching design will aims to support all student ) And UK will urge countries´ commitments under the UN Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD)
- 5 So far, 134 countries have ratified or acceded to the Convention. But how many countries are taking actions at a practical level? Only a few….
- 6
- 7
- 8 Latin American region had also submitted a big agenda of inclusion for this event to make their voices heard.
- 9 For its preparation, UN organizations, NGOs, and experts on disabilities were invited to various High Level meetings to decide what should be included in the agenda. And in May, as a representative of the UNESCO, I attended one of the meeting where more than 100 representatives attended.
- 10
- 11 To be honest, I was a little bit disappointed at this meeting because of many vague contents being discussed instead of practical parts (theories and Human Rights issues).
- 12
- 13 When we started discussing about Education for the people with disability, I spoke out with poor Spanish saying:
- 14 “I was a teacher. And I believe in Inclusive Education. From the perspective of teacher, the problem we have is that teachers are willing to include students with disabilities only if they know how to deal with them, and most of us don´t know what to do. Human rights are important. All the constitutions supporting inclusion are equally important. So many countries have ratified CRPD meaning they are supporting Human Rights and inclusion at national levels. But they don´t put them into practice so we need to start discussing on the contents of professional developments which take into account of teachers´ busy schedule.”
- 15
- 16 As a response to my comment, a person from the Ministry of Education (of a country A) said:
- 17 “We have professional training in our country so they know how to teach. We should focus more on Human Rights approach!!”
- 18
- 19 I said:
- 20 “Just because there exists training program, it does not mean teachers know how to teach students with disabilities.”
- 21
- 22 Unfortunately, my comments were initially included in the agenda, but was excluded as if professional development wes not as important as Human Rights approach.
- 23
- 24 Although human rights base approach is really important at the global level, I don´t think every teachers will be able to have a skill to teach unless they have proper training.
- 25
- 26 I think many agendas and educational programs do not focus on classrooms and teachers as much as it should be.
- 27 Maybe I should gain more professional experience and speech skills to be able to convince policy makers.
New York, 3 October 2013 – The inclusion of the rights of persons with disabilities in the Post-2015 Development Agenda was debated at the highest level of government during the opening of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly a week before. It is the first time in UN history that the rights of persons with disabilities have been discussed within the framework of the UN political agenda.
UK is taking an initiative for this.
According to “UK pledge to help tackle the ‘great neglect’ of disability”, UK pledged that all public-based school will be designed to allow disability access, and using “universal design” (universal because for the diverse students, its infrastructure and teaching design will aims to support all student ) And UK will urge countries´ commitments under the UN Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD)
So far, 134 countries have ratified or acceded to the Convention. But how many countries are taking actions at a practical level? Only a few….
Latin American region had also submitted a big agenda of inclusion for this event to make their voices heard.
For its preparation, UN organizations, NGOs, and experts on disabilities were invited to various High Level meetings to decide what should be included in the agenda. And in May, as a representative of the UNESCO, I attended one of the meeting where more than 100 representatives attended.
To be honest, I was a little bit disappointed at this meeting because of many vague contents being discussed instead of practical parts (theories and Human Rights issues).
When we started discussing about Education for the people with disability, I spoke out with poor Spanish saying:
“I was a teacher. And I believe in Inclusive Education. From the perspective of teacher, the problem we have is that teachers are willing to include students with disabilities only if they know how to deal with them, and most of us don´t know what to do. Human rights are important. All the constitutions supporting inclusion are equally important. So many countries have ratified CRPD meaning they are supporting Human Rights and inclusion at national levels. But they don´t put them into practice so we need to start discussing on the contents of professional developments which take into account of teachers´ busy schedule.”
As a response to my comment, a person from the Ministry of Education (of a country A) said:
“We have professional training in our country so they know how to teach. We should focus more on Human Rights approach!!”
I said:
“Just because there exists training program, it does not mean teachers know how to teach students with disabilities.”
Unfortunately, my comments were initially included in the agenda, but was excluded as if professional development wes not as important as Human Rights approach.
Although human rights base approach is really important at the global level, I don´t think every teachers will be able to have a skill to teach unless they have proper training.
I think many agendas and educational programs do not focus on classrooms and teachers as much as it should be.
Maybe I should gain more professional experience and speech skills to be able to convince policy makers.
Thanks for reading.
I agree with you! In developing countries, I think most countries have beautiful constitution and laws and ratified international Conventions. The problem is implementation. I think countries are invited to agree on these international meetings but their focus is to finalize these beautiful texts before they leave the meetings. Ideas often come from developed countries and developing countries agree with the ambitious text because of pressure in front of the international community. To help implementation we need to support good teacher training, materials, infrastructure, laws and capacity to enforce the implementation. In order to make it universal it cannot be foreign charity activities alone but first we need good data and monitoring system. In developing countries civil registration is not universal and information about disabilities is another level of detailed data. All these are necessary but takes time. To help government we also need to use international organizations and coalition of stakeholders defending the rights of people with disabilities. Small changes are happening but these should be scaled up. I also thought Paralympics is a good example of such good change. Of course we need to do more.
Dear Akemi san,
First of all, thank you so much for your comment.
And I am glad you agree with me. It seems to me that your voice with actual experience and frustration becomes more real to me, because you’ve been there and seen many of them.
Generally speaking, given the tendency on LGTB and inclusion for the last decades, to take some examples, I think this world is getting better than before, but we “smart” human should DO much more rather than SAYing too many things.